True toll of Deepwater disaster may be 50 times worse than thought

The recorded impact of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on wildlife may have severely underestimated the number of deaths of whales and dolphins, according to a new report.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010 devastated the Gulf region ecologically and economically. However, a new study published in Conservation Letters reveals that the true impact of the disaster on wildlife may be gravely underestimated. The study argues that fatality figures based on the number of recovered animal carcasses will not give a true death toll, which may be 50 times higher than believed.

"The Deepwater oil spill was the largest in US history, however, the recorded impact on wildlife was relatively low, leading to suggestions that the environmental damage of the disaster was actually modest," said lead author Dr Rob Williams from the University of British Columbia."This is because reports have implied that the number of carcasses recovered, 101, equals the number of animals killed by the spill."

The team focused their research on 14 species of cetacean, an order of mammals including whales and dolphins. While the number of recovered carcasses has been assumed to equal the number of deaths, the team argues that marine conditions and the fact that many deaths will have occurred far from shore mean recovered carcasses will only account for a small proportion of deaths.

To illustrate their point, the team multiplied recent species abundance estimates by the species mortality rate. An annual carcass recovery rate was then estimated by dividing the mean number of observed strandings each year by the estimate of annual mortality.

The team's analysis suggests that only 2% of cetacean carcasses were ever historically recovered after their deaths in this region, meaning that the true death toll from the Deepwater Horizon disaster could be 50 times higher than the number of deaths currently estimated.

"This figure illustrates that carcass counts are hugely misleading, if used to measure the disaster's death toll," said co-author Scott Kraus of the New England Aquarium "No study on carcass recovery from strandings has ever recovered anything close to 100% of the deaths occurring in any cetacean population. The highest rate we found was only 6.2%, which implied 16 deaths for every carcass recovered."

The reason for the gulf between the estimates may simply be due to the challenges of working in the marine environment. The Deepwater disaster took place 40 miles offshore, in 1500m of water, which is partly why estimates of oil flow rates during the spill were so difficult to make.

"The same factors that made it difficult to work on the spill also confound attempts to evaluate environmental damages caused by the spill," said Williams. "Consequently, we need to embrace a similar level of humility when quantifying the death tolls."

If the approach outlined by this study were to be adopted the team believe this may present an opportunity to use the disaster to develop new conservation tools that can be applied more broadly, revealing the environmental impacts of other human activities in the marine environment.

"The finding that strandings represent a very low proportion of the true deaths is also critical in considering the magnitude of other human causes of mortality like ship strikes, where the real impacts may similarly be dramatically underestimated by the numbers observed" said John Calambokidis, a Researcher with Cascadia Research and a co-author on the publication.

"Our concern also applies to certain interactions with fishing gear, because there are not always systematic data with which to accurately estimate by-catch, especially for large whales", noted Jooke Robbins, a co-author from the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies. "When only opportunistic observations are available, these likely reflect a fraction of the problem."

"While we did not conduct a study to estimate the actual number of deaths from the oil spill, our research reveals that the accepted figures are a grave underestimation," concluded Dr. Williams. "We now urge methodological development to develop appropriate multipliers so that we discover the true cost of this tragedy."

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

National Briefing | South

Louisiana: BP Loses Personal Data

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: March 29, 2011

P

A BP employee lost a laptop containing personal data belonging to thousands of residents who filed claims for compensation after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a company spokesman, Curtis Thomas, said Tuesday. Mr. Thomas said the company mailed letters on Monday to roughly 13,000 people whose data was stored on the computer, notifying them about the loss and offering to pay for their credit to be monitored. The company also reported the missing laptop to law enforcement, Mr. Thomas said. The computer was password-protected, but the information was not encrypted. The data included a spreadsheet of claimants’ names, Social Security numbers, phone numbers and addresses. Mr. Thomas said the company did not have any evidence that the personal information had been misused.

Sea Turtle Deaths Anger Mississippi Residents

As a resident of coastal Mississippi for more than 30 years, Shirley Tillman is used to seeing a few drum fish, sea gulls or jelly fish wash up on nearby sandy shores. It’s a fact of life living by the sea. But in the past few weeks Shirley has come across something she’s never seen before; dead sea turtles washing up on beaches near spring break vacationers.
They are part of a growing number of dead fish, animals and birds she and other Mississippi residents have photographed washing in with the tides in recent weeks. For Shirley, a trip to the beach no longer provides the same relaxing refuge as before.
“It’s very upsetting,” says Shirley, a grandmother and wife of a Pass Christian home builder. “I have never found anything like this until after the oil spill. It used to be if you found a dead dolphin or turtle it was front page news around here. Now it’s no big deal.”Dead turtle found March 25, near Pass Christian MS photos by Shirley Tillman
Gulfport's Institute for Marine Mammal Studies reports it has collected 38 dead or stranded turtles in Mississippi this year, most in the past few weeks. As is the case with dolphin strandings this year, turtle tissue samples are turned over to the The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which does necropsies and further testing.
NMFS is investigating the deaths of these turtles and has increased surveillance, according to Blair Mase-Guthrie, a southeast regional stranding coordinator. “We are treating this very seriously,” she said. Possible causes could range from infectious disease, sudden shifts in water temperature, biotoxins such as red tide or the impact from the BP oil that polluted the area. "We're not ruling out any factor."
An NMFS spokeswoman in Washington confirmed agency experts are reviewing the data, but cautioned that turtle strandings tend to happen in the spring. NMFS records show there have been 13 turtle strandings in Mississippi so far this year, a number that will rise as databases are updated.
Even 13 dead turtles is an unusually high number in March. In the past three years, NMFS reports no turtles were stranded in Mississippi until the beginning of April. The only other Gulf state to report a rise in on-shore turtle deaths this year is Texas with 48, more than twice the number counted in 2009--the year before the BP oil blowout. That year, the total number of on-shore turtle deaths in the Gulf shot up to 248, nearly five times the number from the previous year.
All five turtle species found in the gulf are endangered or threatened, including the Kemp Ridleys and the Loggerheads often seen near shore. Federal protection and tracking programs are in place to try to preserve habitat and learn more about the lives of some of the most fascinating and revered reptile species in the world.Dead turtles found recently in Long Beach, MS photos by Laurel Lockamy
Shirley Tillman and other residents nearby say in some cases they have been appalled by the lack of response in their communities. On Friday, Shirley found a dead sea turtle and reported it to authorities. She was told to leave it on the beach, so she called in the coordinates and dragged it off the shoreline, leaving it by a wall marked off with orange cones. She says the next day the turtle was still there, decomposing.
“I’m really mad. I’m finding dead turtles, birds, giant fish and other animals all over the beach. No one comes by to clean them up right away and people come down here and let their kids play next to them. And the water looks like chicken broth.”
"It's so sad," says Mississippi coastal resident Laurel Lockamy who found a dead sea turtle over the weekend wrapped in orange tape, ready for retrieval.
Turtles are just the latest sea life deaths to get federal attention. So far this year, at least 134 dolphins have been found stranded along the Gulf coast, about four times the average number. Nearly half of the dolphins were newborns or juveniles. Earlier this year NOAA issued an Unusual Mortality Event for dolphins, which triggers a federal investigation into the deaths.
Recently, dolphin tissue samples from independent marine labs were confiscated and sent to federal labs for analysis due to a federal investigation into their cause of death. NMFS is continuing to do testing on the turtles and dolphins but test results aren’t expected soon. Scientists say it may be impossible to know if dolphin and turtle strandings are due to the BP oil blowout. And some say the increased numbers of dead dolphins and turtles could be due to increased surveillance of the area after the oil washed in.
That’s not very reassuring to residents who have already lost trust in government officials and the BP claims process. Science may take a long time to solve these mysterious deaths, but people like Shirley feel they already know the answer. She and others blame ongoing health problems from exposures to oil and dispersants, something the medical establishment has yet to confirm. That's not surprising, Shirley says. "If they don't have a decent system to track and find out what's happening to dolphins and turtles, then why should they have one for people?"
Whether or not the oil had anything to do with the dead turtles washing up on the beaches, people here simply want answers. They want their lives—and their ocean—back. They want it back the way it used to be.

ASHEVILLE, NC –Wild South’s Roosevelt-Ashe Society announced today the winners for its annual Roosevelt-Ashe Society Conservation Awards. The awards honor outstanding conservation work in the South and recognize heroes for their contributions to protect the South’s wild places.
“These awards exist for people who believe they can move a mountain,” said Randy Talley, co- owner of The Green Sage Coffeehouse and Cafe. “The award winners are champions for all of
us to believe we can change this world, we can change our destructive behaviors, we can make a difference.”

The Award winners were selected by an independent committee made up of highly respected conservationists from across the South. Their task was difficult and unenviable due to the this year’s amazing pool of nominees. On Friday night, Wild South’s Roosevelt-Ashe Society held its annual Green Tie Gala, a “Green Oscars” event where the award winners were announced and honored.

“I’ve seen my mentors and heroes receive these awards in years past,” said Jay Leutze, Outstanding Volunteer-Advocate in Conservation award winner with the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, “and I am honored to receive recognition alongside them tonight.”

“It was fun to see our guests walk down “The Green Carpet” at this year’s Gala and have such a great time,” said Tracy Davids, Wild South’s Executive Director. “It took a village to make the Gala the smash it was and I thank all of the Asheville area businesses that contributed to it.”

Monday, March 28, 2011

On March 25th, 2011, I received a very prestigious award from the Roosevelt / Ashe Society in Asheville, North Carolina for “Outstanding Journalist in Conservation, 2010”. I was honored beyond belief since the list of people I was up against are some of my friends and mentors from years past.

I cannot in all honesty take this award as a technical journalist. I am just a story teller who knows how to use cameras and video to tell those stories. The stories are about real events and real people, not about me. I was given a gift and that is the ability to share stories like this one.

It is a story about a lady who became so frustrated by the treatment of her family and friends in the Gulf after the BP disaster that she had to make a statement. She and many others have tried for the last many months to get the American public to realize that the disaster is not over.

In fact, it has just begun.

People are sick with unexplained illnesses like chemically induced flu and lesions that look and act like Staph infection but antibiotics used on Staph will not work on their sores. There are many reported cases of respiratory distress among fishermen and vessel of opportunity workers used in the cleanup and multiple rounds of steroids to no avail. People all over the coast that have tested high for Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) VOCs are dangerous forms of gases and heavy metals that accumulate in the blood stream causing a wide variety of illnesses including cancer, none of them good!

Due to dire financial circumstances everywhere, people who were once good friends are now enemies if they say or do something the other doesn't like. Industry shills are well skilled in inserting just enough language to get one fighting with the other. It is the oldest trick and military strategy in the books... "Divide and Conquer"!

Here is an opportunity for everyone to put aside differences and support this lady carry a unified message from the Gulf people that we still have a long way to go before all is well.

Cherri Foytlin walking into Atlanta by JLW

Cherri Foytlin is a mother of 6 who has taken on the task of making a statement so bold that it must be heard. She left her home South of New Orleans and started walking to Washington D. C. spreading the word that the crisis in the Gulf is far from over.

Along the way she hopes to meet up with coal activists to learn from them what is happening in our communities and tell us about her experiences since the BP, Deep Water Horizon disaster on Apr. 20, 2010. She has an idea that we can all work together to formulate a single message for Power Shift. That message is similar to the one we cry from coal country. Her husband works in the oil field and depends on the rigs for a living. We all know what that is like since most coal-field people have relatives in the mines. Ultimately the goal is Clean Energy but in the mean time we must have safe working conditions and enforcement of all environmental laws governing the industry.

Just like in the coal field, if this nation spent as much money on researching renewable resources as we do defending extraction technology, coal and oil, we would have an economic boom in the is country that would put the Silicon Valley to shame.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is far from over. Fishermen are put in the position of being FORCED to go out into water they know in their hearts is not safe for sale. Many of the fishermen I know personally will not eat the catch from their own boats. If they speak out they are chastised by their fellow fishermen for putting their jobs in jeopardy. These people should be compensated for every day they have to stay out of the fishing grounds until the waters are truly safe for human consumption.

All photos, video, editing and opinions stated are mine and mine alone!

It is heartbreaking what is happening in Louisiana but that is not all of the story. Reports surfaced of oil in Alabama, Mississippi. Because the brunt of the main impact was seen first in Louisiana the rest of the oil has been ignored for the most part.

I saw oil on two flights on two days well over 100 miles apart and in currents that will not allow the so called sediment / algae bloom to travel upstream to Mississippi and Alabama!

No one expect the responses to be perfect to these incidents but we demand the truth about them when they happen.

What is happening to the communities effected by this is almost criminal. The oil industry has basically declared them an energy sacrifice zone with no recourse but to play by the rules, leave, or die trying to survive. Fishermen must either fish in contaminated water and sell their catch to unsuspecting Americans or go without means to survive themselves.

"At this point, the dark substance is believed to be caused by a tremendous amount of sediment being carried down the Mississippi River due to high water, possibly further agitated by dredging operations," the Coast Guard release said.

A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, however, said none of the three dredges operating near the mouth of the Mississippi River has reported any oil in the material they're removing from the river bottom to keep the channel deep enough for ocean-going ships.

But as Louisiana officials and the Coast Guard conduct tests to determine the source, an all-too-familiar scene is developing over a 30-mile stretch of coast: Oil and oil byproducts such as tarballs have come rolling in. And teams of workers are rolling out a containment boom—the fencelike structures designed to keep oil from washing ashore—as oil-skimming vessels try to intercept the oil on the water's surface. And where the oil has landed, cleanup crews are scouring up the petroleum mess.
"We have 10,000 feet of hard boom and 9,000 feet of five-inch sorbent boom ordered into the area. We have 5,000 feet of each boom already delivered and staged in Grand Isle," Coast Guard Capt. Jonathan Burton said in a statement.Meanwhile, residents of the Louisiana Gulf community of Grand Isle, who thought they'd finally turned the page on the nightmare of last year's BP spill, have noticed crude invading once again.
"I was out there from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. yesterday and the stuff came in in waves onto the island and through Caminada Pass," Grand Isle resident Betty Doud told the Times- Picayune. "There were these orange, nasty waves and black oil mixed with it. The oil was in the rocks along the pass."
You can watch a a video report on the new oil concerns from WWL in New Orleans below:
(Photo via: John Wathen's Photobucket page)

Louisiana doctor suspects patients' ill health caused by spill

Chris Miller Reporting

Blindness, nosebleeds, bleeding ears, memory loss. Is this what's happening to people exposed to leaking radiation in Japan? No, it's the symptoms a Louisiana doctor says his patients are dealing with more and more since the BP oil spill.

Dr. Mike Robichaux, an ear, nose and throat specialist and a former state senator, has shared his information with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network. LEAN director Marylee Orr says it's compelling.

"We are gathering evidence that I don't believe you can dismiss," Orr told members of the news media. "You may wonder about it, but you're going to find that all these folks have very high levels of the ten chemicals that we're testing for."

Dr. Robichaux says chemicals found in oil dispersants can have nasty effects on the human body.

Source of 30-mile oil spill in Gulf puzzles officials

Published: Monday, March 21, 2011, 11:00 PM

Emulsified oil, oil mousse and tar balls from an unknown source were washing up on beaches from Grand Isle to West Timbalier Island along the Gulf of Mexico, a stretch of about 30 miles, and it was still heading west Monday afternoon, a Louisiana official said. The state is testing the material to see if it matches oil from last April's BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.

View full sizeMichael DeMocker, The Times-PicayuneIn a split-field photograph, a fisherman looks down at the surface oil in a tidal pool near a breakwater in Grand Isle on Friday..

Oil spill response workers under the direction of the U.S. Coast Guard and state officials were scrambling to block more of the material from coming ashore. ES&H Corp. has been hired to oversee the cleanup.
"We are working with our state and local partners to mitigate any further environmental impact while continuing to facilitate the safe movement of marine traffic to the fullest extent possible," Capt. Jonathan Burton, the federal on-scene coordinator for the response, said in a news release late Monday.
"To avoid delays in resource availability and delivery, we have taken a forward leaning approach and authorized ES&H to procure whatever additional boom and resources they need," Burton said.

The news release said that when all areas where the material has washed ashore are combined, about a half-mile of shoreline was affected.
Workers have deployed about 10,000 feet of containment and sorbent boom to prevent damage to environmentally sensitive areas; two MARKO skimmers are being moved to the area and another two are available; and two barge boats and two drum skimmers are at the scene.
The state has requested more boom, sorbents, skimmers and other equipment from the Coast Guard, said Garret Graves, coastal adviser to Gov. Bobby Jindal.
"Currently, boom is deployed in the Elmers/Caminada area and we're looking at one gap closure" in that area, Graves said. "We have multiple independent tests under way to determine the source."
On Sunday, Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts reported that a Coast Guard official had said the oil might be from a project to plug and abandon a well just offshore of Grand Isle. But Coast Guard officials said they're still waiting for tests of material collected in that area to determine where it came from.
A Coast Guard news release said a second, much larger area of sheen south of Grand Isle in the Gulf of Mexico contained small amounts of oil constituents mixed with sediment that seemed to be coming from the Mississippi River. The Coast Guard Cutter Pompano was deployed and gathered samples, which contained only trace amounts of petroleum hydrocarbons, oil and grease.
The samples were tested against state Department of Enviromental Quality standards, which call for no more than 65 parts per million of hydrocarbons and just under 10,000 ppm of oil and grease. One sample contained 8 ppm of total petroleum hydrocarbons and 86 ppm of oil and grease. A second contained 5 ppm of total hydrocarboms and 15 ppm of oil and grease.
"At this point, the dark substance is believed to be caused by a tremendous amount of sediment being carried down the Mississippi River due to high water, possibly further agitated by dredging operations," the Coast Guard release said.
A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, however, said none of the three dredges operating near the mouth of the Mississippi River has reported any oil in the material they're removing from the river bottom to keep the channel deep enough for ocean-going ships.
The Mississippi River had risen to 12.5 feet in New Orleans on Monday, up from only 3 feet above sea level three weeks ago, an indicator that the river contains a heavy load of sediment from upstream.
Betty Doud, a Grand Isle resident who volunteers with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, said she monitored the oil moving along Grand Isle on Sunday.
"I was out there from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. yesterday and the stuff came in in waves onto the island and through Caminada Pass," she said. "There were these orange, nasty waves and black oil mixed with it. The oil was in the rocks along the pass."
Doud collected a sample of the material for Jefferson Parish President John Young, who was inspecting the area, and Young told her it would be tested at a laboratory in Lafayette. Doud has sent other samples to the Bucket Brigade, which will have them tested independently to determine if the oil matches that released last year from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.
The tests also will determine whether the oil contains cancer-causing oil constituents, or Corexit, the dispersant used last year to break up oil from the BP well.

Grand Isle again battles oil near shores

wwltv.com

Posted on March 21, 2011 at 6:13 PM

Katie Moore / Eyewitness News
GRAND ISLE, La. -- Workers combed the beach on Elmer’s Island in Jefferson Parish Monday, cleaning up oil that washed ashore over the weekend. State and federal officials began testing it, trying to determine the source of the oil.
Almost a year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Grand Isle and Elmer’s Island residents experienced a bit of deja vu.
“When it first happened, I'll be honest with you, they were very concerned. I got a lot of calls and people thought, you know, here we go again,” said Grand Isle Volunteer Fire Chief Aubrey Chaisson.
He and parish leaders flew over the area Sunday and spotted a sheen on the water two miles off the island.
“We found what they call wind roves, light sheening, rainbow sheening, kind of emulsified. It reacts with the surf, kind of like a protein mousse, they call it,” Chaisson said.
The U.S. Coast Guard laid fresh boom Monday, both hard and soft, to protect three key cuts into the marshes. It's an area that Chaisson said the massive BP oil spill never touched.
“We fought very hard during the whole spill to protect what we could and we accomplished something here and we don't want to lose it. That's the most important thing,” he said.
Jefferson Parish leaders called in the Coast Guard to handle the incident. They used the same command out of Houma that handled the BP clean up last year.
“It's definitely a hydrocarbon. It has an odor and the characteristics of oil in some of those areas,” said Coast Guard Commander Mark McManus, commanding officer of the Marine Safety Unit in Houma.
More than 50 workers scoured the beach with shovels and plastic bags Monday.
“The primary oiled areas were on Elmer's Island and Fouchon Beach,” McManus said.
State wildlife and fisheries agents said they began "fingerprinting" samples of the sheen in the Gulf of Mexico and from the beach on Elmers Island to find out if it's residual oil from the BP spill, or another source.
Chaisson and McManus said there’s no more oil washing ashore on Grand Isle, and what is already there is weathered.
“I think it's well under control,” Chaisson said.
Wildlife and fisheries expects LSU researchers to have the test results completed by Tuesday.

"I just wanted to break out crying this is probably going to happen the rest of our lives," says Michel.

But the oil did not come from the Deep Water Horizon Explosion.

Coast Guard Commander John Burton of Morgan City has confirmed a plug and abandonment project that occurred south of Grand Isle yesterday.

Commander Burton says oil was released into the water for about four to six hours and the source is now secured.

"This is definitely oil; you can smell it. You can feel it; it's not algae," says Jefferson Parish President John Young.

Young immediately contacted, the Coast Guard to put out boom.

"West of the beach coming in, right here is what you see. We're trying to keep that from getting past Elmer Island into the marsh and wetlands. That's why we've made a call to the Governor's Office to block off that last little cut," says Young.

Residents are wondering how this will impact summer tourism because they were on the verge of making a comeback after last year.

"We like to have our tourists come down here, they come from all over the place. But I don't know what's going to happen," says Michel.

Over the past few weeks, there were numerous reports of dead dolphins across the Gulf, including a report of 5 dead dolphins near Rattlesnake Bayou on the east side of Barataria Bay, LA. As part of our basin patrol program, we planned a fly over of the Barataria Basin, with Bonnie Schumaker, http://www.OnWingsOfCare.org , to look for dead/stranded dolphins and other wildlife.

Tracy Kuhns, Louisiana BAYOUKEEPER

After receiving reports Saturday, March 19, 2011, of oil and strong petroleum odors 23 miles south of Grand Isle, we decided to fly over the Gulf. We flew from New Orleans, south along the Mississippi River and across the east side of Barataria Bay toward the Gulf of Mexico. At first we didn't see anything out of the ordinary, brown heavily silted waters coming from the muddy Mississippi River dumping into the Gulf. Typical spring high river water. We flew a little to the east and found more of the same. We turned to the southwest, heading toward the reported oil sighting south of Grand Isle, LA. Almost immediately we began seeing, what appeared to be, large areas of oil just below the surface along with streaks of multicolored "sheen" on the surface. The smell of petroleum was thick in the air. We flew southwest, to approximately 40 miles south of Grand Isle and followed the "plumes" and "sheen" north all the way in to Grand Terre Island and Grand Isle. The "sheen" appeared to be flowing into Barataria Bay through Four Bayou Pass and Grand Isle Pass.

Photo by JLW

We saw only a few birds, one large, dead Red Fish and only three dolphins during the entire fly over. Mike Roberts, Louisiana Bayoukeeper, reported what we were seeing to the Coast Guard, as we were flying in.

03/19/2011 Photos By John Wathen, Hurricane Creekkeeper

It was surreal. Is the BP Well leaking again? Is this more, larger waves of old dispersed oil washing in from the BP Well, which has been ongoing since the original spill? Could it be a blow out on another rig? Is the force of the spring river flowing off of the continental shelf pushing dispersed oil back up from the water bottoms? Is it something else all together? As we flew inland, across Barataria Bay, heading back to the New Orleans Lakefront Airport, all I could think was "Please Lord, not again! This can't happen again, they still haven't finished cleaning up the mess from the last one!"

The fly overs help us identify problems and their locations in the water. The next day, Sunday, March 20, 2011, we left Lafitte/Barataria in the Bayoukeeper Patrol Vessel to collect samples. The wind was blowing from the south and we began smelling petroleum around Wilkinson Canal. It could have been coming from Bay Jimmy, as clean up from the BP spill is ongoing in this area. We continued south of Bay Jimmy into Barataria Bay. The petroleum smell became stronger and we began to see foam and what appeared to be small globs of weathered oil/dispersant. We grabbed samples of the water and globs. The wind and current was kicking up waves and making it very choppy. We came across thick streams of red/brown foam in the current lines at Coup Au , Four Bayou Pass and Grand Isle Pass and grabbed samples. It was too rough in front of the Islands for our boat to get samples from the uninhabited beaches. We will make another trip to collect samples when it calms down. We will post the results of our sampling as soon as we get them back.

Bonnie Schumaker, http://www.OnWingsOfCare.org , is a fantastic pilot and committed advocate. She donates her plane, time and 50% of the fuel for the fly overs she has taken us on. We are grateful for all she does. We hope you will take the time to go to her website.

Oil from well being plugged may be cause of beach pollution

By Stephen Babcock, The Times-Picayune Oil was released into the Gulf of Mexico south of Grand Isle for four to six hours Saturday, the apparent source of oil that washed ashore on Louisiana beaches Sunday, a Jefferson Parish Council member said.
The source of the leak has been secured, Councilman Chris Roberts said in an email.
There have been reports that Grand Isle and other barrier islans had been polluted by the oil.
Roberts said Coast Guard Capt. John Burton, the commanding officer of the Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit in Morgan City, said a drilling site was being plugged when the leak occurred.
On Saturday, the Coast Guard received varying reports detailing a sheen between three and 100 miles long, starting about six miles off the coast of Grand Isle. However, the Guard apparently is investigating that as a separate incident.
The Coast Guard had investigated the sheen by sending out a cutter to collect samples, Coast Guard spokeswoman Casey Ranel said.
The Coast Guard said the samples contained "only trace amounts of petroleum hydrocarbons, oil and grease."

The Coast Guard said "the dark substance (in the Gulf) is believed to be caused by a tremendous amount of sediment being carried down the Mississippi River due to high water, possibly further agitated by dredging operations."

The Guard said it is deploying boom to protect areas where "an oily substance was washing ashore on Elmer Isle, Fourchon Beach and Grand Isle." (What a contradiction!, it's sediment but we are placing oil boom everywhere!)((JLW))

The Guard is treating the the beach oilings as separate from the sheen it said contained only trace amounts of hydrocarbons.
"We have 10,000 feet of hard boom and 9,000 feet of five-inch sorbent boom ordered into the area. We have 5,000 feet of each boom already delivered and staged in Grand Isle," Burton said.
A company has been hired to clean up the impacted shorelines, the Coast Guard said.
"Samples have been taken from the shoreline impacts for testing, but the oily substance is not, at this time, suspected to be residual oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill," the Coast Guard said in a press release.
Grand Isle Fire Chief Aubrey Chaisson said he saw the substance up close Sunday aboard a boat and also viewed it from a helicopter. He said the substance, which covered about a two to three-mile area, looked like "emulsified oil."The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Large new oil spill under investigation off Louisiana's coast

The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating a large oil sheen off the Louisiana coast about 20 miles north of the site where the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up last April.

Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathen of the Waterkeeper Alliance first heard reports about the slick on Saturday and flew over the site for a firsthand look. He shot the photo at right, and more images from his flight can be seen here.

"It was hard to believe I was seeing as much oil in the South Louisiana area again," he wrote on his blog yesterday. "It was even harder to believe that our so called government watchdogs have not closed these fishing grounds!"

Wathen says he hasn't seen so much oil in the Gulf since last July. Rocky Kistner of the Natural Resources Defense Council reports that a helicopter pilot sighted the slick on Friday, and a fishing boat captain who sailed through it that same day said it was strong enough to make his eyes burn.

According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the first call about the spill came in to the National Response Center at about 11 a.m. on Saturday, with the caller describing a sheen about a half-mile square. A couple of hours later, another caller reported a sheen about 100 miles long originating from the same area and spreading west.

The Coast Guard says it collected samples from the slick that showed trace amounts of petroleum hydrocarbons, oil and grease. It speculates that the pollution could be caused "by a tremendous amount of sediment being carried down the Mississippi River due to high water, possibly further agitated by dredging operations." The agency says it does not believe the pollution is coming from the Deepwater Horizon spill site.

On Sunday, officials with Louisiana's Jefferson Parish said an oil well south of Grand Isle had released oil for four to six hours before being plugged, the Daily Comet reports.

The Coast Guard was also notified yesterday that an "oily substance" was washing ashore on Elmer Isle, Fourchon Beach and Grand Isle on the Louisiana coast. Boom is being laid to protect environmentally sensitive areas.

Yep … It’s called the “Matterhorn Field,” and it’s owned by W&T, whose stock tanked Friday afternoon … they say they stopped it already, but whatever. We’ll believe it when we see it. … ::sighs heavily:: … Apparently it’s 100 miles long by 5 miles wide, even though the Coast Guard is saying it’s “3 to 100 miles long.” [GAAAAH - ed.] Of course the Coast Guard dismissed it at first as sediment, and then “sheen,” and then, even as Louisianans began to weep, the Coast Guard “tested” it and said it was a mixture of oil and sediment.
HA F**KING HA. Jerks. Having been up close enough to test Louisiana crude myself, I can vouch that the smell of oil is UNMISTAKABLE and OVERPOWERING. Especially when you’re SURROUNDED BY IT. Under pressure, though, you can “test” water to show anything you like. You can test water samples in such a way that your commanding officer breathes over your shoulder and hangs a picture of Matt Simmons (RIP) on the wall inside your cubicle, and then magically, you don’t see hardly any oil at all. Is how this bullshit is playing out now.
Authorities also state vaguely that the oil near the shore (unmistakably oil, to everyone who lives there & witnesses it) is from a different “well-plugging operation” than the 100-mile-long, rainbow-sheeny ribbon of “sediment” our citizen journalists photographed in the air. Well, rainbow-sheen might appear on the surface of the water if some old Deepwater oil they sank with Corexit had been dredged up, but so far that cocktail combination has just turned to muck, foam, and snot — all rainbow-less. And as far as our i-reporters can research, no dredging projects are currently being conducted in the area — especially none which could cause a 100-mile ribbon of rainbow sheen. But we should give them the benefit of the doubt. Big Oil LOVES (*to rape) Louisiana. It was an accident. They didn’t mention. For 2 days while they tried to cover it up. And are still lying about. What’s not to trust?

all ground photos (c) the heroic Mac Mackenzie of NOLA ER dot org, who rushed down to Grand Isle and took pictures on Sunday March 20

Of course my tinfoil hat says they did it on purpose, to feed the algae. Regardless, this Spring Break, those Mycoplasma mycoides, oil-eating synthetic bacteria of Craig Venter’s, named “Synthia,” with a “computer program for a parent” — see links below — those Franken-bacteria will be going crazy at the lunch counter, sucking up oxygen in the process, which creates tons more algae that should NOT be there, in the COLD, washing up onto once-white Florida panhandle beaches like a bad sci-fi horror movie. Conveniently, this algae, which they hope kills the Gulf of Mexico as a tourist and fishing entity forever, will be used to power the military’s vehicles with synthetic algae-based biofuel which has already been unleashed into the world’s oceans. F*@#$!)@(*&%K!! Do yall get the quantum leap of f**kery between “genetically-modified” organisms and straight-up SYNTHETIC ones? … Disaster capitalism MUST END. This constitutes MOBSTER-style f**king around with the natural order of things, courtesy the Gangster Party. These are OUR beaches and marshes. NOT THEIRS.
And nevermind the huge sticky underwater tarmats and beach-hugging oil-slicks being served up on a platter and stuck to the feets of Spring Breakers this week, who cluelessly bound out into the same surf that put Paul Doom in a wheelchair. As C-130s and helicopters continue to buzz Gulf Coast houses while they spray Corexit (and copper, iron, phosphorus, and whatever else feeds that Franken-bacteria) in low-flying night missions, pre-dawn workers spirit away the stillborn baby dolphins and other carcasses from massive fish kills, which would otherwise serve to annoy capitalists on the boardwalk who would rather pretend everything was hunky-dory, as if their lives depended on it, which they do.

all air photos (c) the heroic John Wathen, Hurricane Creekkeeper

So many people have died for this fuel — rather, for the protection of this military-industrial complex, and diametrically opposed to the interests of the flesh-and-blood people it’s meant to serve — and now, on top of the first wave of springtime FAIL and SAD HEARTBREAKING DEATH caused by the Deepwater, we have a new oil spill with horrifying photos to kick the PTSD back in. Woooo, Spring Break! 28th Amendment for the Separation of Corporation and State!
(You can do it, ya know. Start in your own town. Get your city council to adopt a resolution calling for a Constitutional Amendment to end corporate personhood, like Richmond, CA did. They’re an oil town, BTW.)
And an aside, to lighten it up with some mystery … While we were going to unconstitutional war with Libya, and Japan was desperately throwing the kitchen sink at their “virtually indestructible” nuclear reactors, a huge BOOM-ROAR-noise set northern Florida aflitter. People could hear and feel it for 100 miles, and they thought it was an earthquake but it didn’t register as one, and it wasn’t a tornado or high winds, and it wasn’t a jet breaking the sound barrier, because it lasted for 20 minutes. Here’s some scary home-filmed footage, and when you watch it, remember, this isn’t Cloverdale, this is real life. It sounds an awful lot like the Earth singing — skip to 4mins of the latter link if you want the good kind of chills, and to be reminded of the beauty of this ride. Here’s another, of Jupiter singing. You won’t get demoralized, will you? If you do, the terrorists have won. And we need you. The show’s about to start. Everybody’s tuning up, even the JERKS who don’t give a shit if they slowly kill all my relations in Dixie while they try to NUKE AND PAVE THE GULF FOREVER. 28th Amendment for the Separation of Corporation and State, please. Please. ::stabs pillow::

screengrab of maritime activity March 17-ish, 2011. Sure looks like boats applying the poisonous dispersant/accelerant/anti-personnel weapon Corexit in circles, is why the eagle-eye watchdog screengrabbed it in the first place, before we knew about any of this bullshit. Say it with me: HANDS OFF OUR LAND AND WATER, F**KTARDS

And now, here are a metric ass-ton of latest Gulf Coast / Gangster Party-centric links in red, pointing to the fact that ONLY WIND, WATER, SOLAR, AND HEMP WILL NOT TURN AROUND AND BITE US IN THE ASS. I collected these before the recent Japan / Libya / new Gulf spill triple-whammy … and now more than ever it seems appropriate to decentralize government, money, and power, and to imagine a world where humanity powered itself with fuel that didn’t kill anyone:SunHerald.com: Infant dolphins dying in high numbers – Gulfport – Feb. 20, 2011 (so they’ve already started to lie about the numbers … but the Gulf Coast activist community has counted about 200 aborted dolphin fetuses washed ashore in two months. The normal count by this point in the year is TWO.) AL.com: 9 dead dolphins found since Saturday in Alabama and Mississippi (Also, 32 human miscarriages were confirmed in the Plaquemines Parish area of LA alone, including one woman whose fetus was dead inside her for a month, so it gave her toxic septicemia and she is no longer with us. So if you figure in the number of women who won’t talk about their miscarriages, and multiply that by the surface area of the Gulf Coast, no doubt hundreds of expectant mothers were crushed this year by the loss of their children-to-be. Thanks, BP! … )Gulf Restoration Network: Are House Republicans waging a war on the Gulf? please read, and then call the White House and tell them what you think…

(c) John Wathen, Hurricane Creekkeeper. All images on this page were taken either march 19 or 20, 2011

The U.S. Air Force is the largest consumer of petroleum in the military. Every day, it burns more than 7.0 million gallons of oil. And where do we get that oil? In 2010, the U.S. spent more than $300 billion to import 4.2 billion barrels of oil, largely to make fuels needed to meet military and civilian transportation demands. One of the greatest threats to our economic and national security is the need to secure foreign oil. So, when President Obama confirmed a commitment to develop domestically renewable petroleum replacements from biomass, also known as bio-crude, he put a stake in the ground that alternatives are not just good for the environment, they’re critical to our national and economic security. Bio-crudes are compatible with the DoD’s current fleet of tanks, ships, and planes, which will be in use for the next 30 years.”

The initial phase of the BP/Synthetic Genomics deal will focus on identifying and describing the naturally occurring organisms and their natural biological functions that thrive in subsurface hydrocarbon formations, including petroleum, natural gas, coal, bitumen, shale, and carbon dioxide. Synthetic Genomics will utilize unique technologies including environmental genomics and multiplex microbial culturing techniques. The overarching goal is to explore and understand subsurface microbial processes. Such an understanding would enable hydrocarbon quality enhancement or increased production. BP and Synthetic Genomics will seek to jointly commercialize the bioconversion of subsurface hydrocarbons into cleaner energy products. The second phase of the BP/Synthetic Genomics program will be a series of field pilot studies of the most promising bioconversion approaches.”

“Rhamnolipids are surfactants, or oil dispersants, and they are not restricted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). How interesting. … Rhamnolipids are secreted from Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium. In case you don’t remember the significance of Pseudomonas, let me quote Dr. Riki Ott once again:
“To make things a little scarier, some of the oil-eating bacteria have been genetically modified or otherwise bio-engineered to better eat the oil – including Alcanivorax borkumensis and some of the Pseudomonas.” — September 17, 2010; Bio-Remediation or Bio-Hazard? Dispersants, Bacteria and Illness in the Gulf .
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a common bacterium which can cause disease in animals, including humans. The symptoms of such infections are generalized inflammation and sepsis. If such colonizations occur in critical body organs, such as the lungs, the urinary tract, and kidneys, the results can be fatal. It is also able to decompose hydrocarbons and has been used to break down tarballs and oil from oil spills.”

Who is BP Slick

John L. Wathen, Hurricane Creekkeeper, located in Tuscaloosa County Alabama. I am the enforcement and advocacy branch of the Friends of Hurricane Creek.
Photographer / videographer, I have dedicated my life to exposing the truth about pollution and lack of accountability by the industries and agencies who use our waterways as waste conduits.